“Spell it,” said Jodie quickly.
“Spell whut?”
“Genetics.”
Mo-Maw snatched Jodie’s plate from the table. She took the wasted stovies and poured them back into the pot.
The telephone began to chirp. Mo-Maw gathered up her limp curls and caught them into a long banana clip. She never stood when she talked on the telephone. She treated every phone call as an opportunity to sit down, smoke her cigarettes, and converse at length. Wrong numbers were her favourite.
Mungo waited for their mother to leave the room. He laid his open hands on the table. “Sake! Why do you always have to start something?”
Jodie didn’t answer him. She laid her head on top of Mungo’s hand. The caramel silk of her hair was shiny and sweet-smelling. He could feel the beat of her pulse murmuring at her temple. She was burning up. They listened to Mo-Maw answer the telephone. She always recited the number back to the caller, an affectation that irritated Jodie. “Hello-o, Hamilton residence. Five-five-four, six-one—” The posh accent slid off of her lips. “Ah, for fuck sake! Oh, it’s you, is it? What do ye want?”
The children listened as Mo-Maw fought with Jocky. It didn’t take long. Her resolve had shallow roots. What started out as a frosty, stubborn blockade soon melted, and she was purring down the phone at him like a teenager. Jodie sat up straight and sighed once. Mungo helped scrape the old nail polish from her fingernails, and one by one, she repainted them in Mo-Maw’s good polish. It was a powdery pink, the colour of a baby’s earlobes.
Mo-Maw’s face was flushed as she came back into the kitchenette. “It’s not even been a whole weekend.” She squeezed Jodie’s hand, which surprised everybody. “Do ye think he loves me?”
Mungo knew his sister was going to ruin it for her, long before she actually did. Jodie allowed her mother a brief moment of reverie before she pulled her hand from her grip. “Surely you are not going to leave again?”
“How no? Am ah no meant to be happy?”
Jodie inclined her head towards Mungo. She said nothing more.
There was a brief moment where it seemed Mo-Maw didn’t know where she was. Then she collected herself and cradled Mungo’s head against her bosom. Mungo inhaled deeply, unsure of when he would be so near to her again. He felt her sink her weight on to her right hip as though she was grounding herself, then something shifted in her tone. All the earlier excitement was gone, her voice was flat, like someone had let all the air from a balloon. “No, no. You’re right, Jodie. I should stay here.”
Jodie’s eyes grew wide as china saucers. Mungo knew he should say something to move Mo-Maw back towards Jocky but he did not. He put his arms around his mother and said nothing.
* * *
Mo-Maw was talking back to a game show. She was counting the last of her loose change as Mungo pulled his cagoule over his head. He hovered around her, sleekitly checked that what she was drinking was only tap water. Then he told her he would be back in a few hours.
With the sudden reappearance of his mother it had been several days since he had last seen James. Mungo still felt terrible that he had mentioned Mo-Maw’s return from Hades, with James’s own mammy dead – real, non-refundable death.
James wasn’t at his doocot, but a fresh spray of pigeon shit and sawdust said he had been there a little earlier. Mungo plodded back through the scheme. It was a dreich Sunday night, a perfect night for weekly baths and ironing work uniforms, and a lethargic malaise had fallen over the tenements. He knew the back of James’s flat faced his own, but he didn’t know the exact number. He tried to look casual as he dawdled along the empty street and checked each buzzer panelling for Jamieson. Mungo was about to give up when at the last close he found the name written in green ink on the top buzzer.
“Who is eht?” It wasn’t James’s voice.
“Hallo, is James there? Can he come out to play?” Mungo cringed. He was bad at this.
But the buzzer razzed and he was grateful to step into the dry close mouth. The close was lined to shoulder height in gold and brown diamond patterned tiles. Each landing had a floral stained-glass window that filled the stone stairwell with fractals of beautiful light. It was the same housing scheme as Mungo’s, but he could tell the council agent who managed this close took more pride in its upkeep. The families who lived here were – by the slightest fraction – better off.
The Jamieson door was a broad set of double doors on the very top landing. James was leaning over the banister, barefooted, in a thick Aran gansey over a pair of nylon football shorts. He looked flat, tired, and stood with his arms crossed like a bored bouncer. He softened when he saw Mungo climb the stairs. Without a word in greeting, Mungo followed him inside and sat down at the opposite end of the settee.
Horse racing highlights were on the television. James’s father was packing a ripstop holdall and arguing with the list of winners. He didn’t acknowledge Mungo as he came in. His horse had lost, and he was packing his bag without thought, like he had packed it too many times before. Mr Jamieson was tall like James, and broad too, useful-looking. His hair was the same flaxen hue but the sides shone with silver. He looked like a man who might enjoy a long swim in January; his face had a high, florid flush. Without taking his gaze from the television he pulled on his navy toque, and Mungo realized then that the hat that James usually wore was a tatty version of his father’s.
When the man finally cast his eyes over his son, they were as grey as the North Sea. Then Mr Jamieson looked over Mungo. It was such a look of disdain that Mungo hid the scuff of his left trainer behind his right, although each was as worn as the other. He wondered what Mr Jamieson had heard about the Hamilton family.
James’s father went out into the hallway. He ripped a wire from the wall and as he came back into the living room he was binding their cream telephone with its own cord. He shoved it into his sports bag without looking at his son. “You know the rules. If you need tae call me, use Mrs Daly’s phone.” James nodded slowly. Mr Jamieson ran his eyes the entire length of Mungo again, and the boy felt an odd compulsion to open his hands and turn out his palms.
“Right.” He zipped the sports bag closed. Reaching into a tight bundle of notes he peeled a stack of them away. He slapped the money on the table. “Three weeks, then. See if ye can no burn through it aw this time, okay? Try …” He started to say something, and then he cast his eyes over Mungo again and thought better of it. “Jist try your best to behave. Stick in at the school. Awright?”
He didn’t hug James goodbye. He just nodded, as though they had passed each other on the street.
Mungo didn’t speak until he heard the man go whistling down the close. “Wow. He’s a laugh.” But James was struck with a type of rictus. Mungo could barely recognize him without his usual carefree look. “You didn’t tell me your da was home.”
“He wasn’t. He only came for the weekend.”
“But I thought he got two weeks off?”
“Aye, he does. But he telt me he’s met a woman from Peterhead. He wanted to head north early and spend some time with her before going back to the rigs.”
Mungo didn’t know where Peterhead was. He said nothing.